


Call of the Sea

by alexxriott



Category: Aquaman (2018), Aquaman (Comics), Justice League (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, F/M, Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 22:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexxriott/pseuds/alexxriott
Summary: Arthur/Mera, alternate universe. A story in which Mera finds that Arthur Curry is a stubborn man, and just maybe she's fallen in love.





	Call of the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, Justice League, DC comics, or Aquaman. The lyrics to the song are not mine either. Thank you!
> 
> A/N: Hey guys, thanks for reading! I have been agonizing over this story for a couple weeks now and have been pretty unsure of myself in how it is so far, but I've decided to just rip off the band aid quick - post my first finished chapter and see how well you guys enjoy it! ^^;  
> 
> There really isn't enough love for Aquaman, especially Jason Momoa's latest Aquaman (yum)...or Mera and Aquaman together. So hopefully, this will be a good edition to the short list of Arthur/Mera stories out there and there will be many more to come!

A boy sat alone on the docks, watching the choppy dark waters swirling around the barnacle covered posts of the docks. The skies above were cool and darkening, but he paid them no heed. His sweet voice filled the air with the tune of a simple song, a little smile on his lips. He tossed a sea shell in the water, kicking his feet over the side. He'd been coming here every day for a while now, ever since his papa died. It gave him comfort when there was none left to be had at home - the empty lighthouse not far from the water's edge. He lived alone, though improper for a boy his age. He tossed another rock - the last from his tiny pile - and ended his song. A storm was coming and he guessed he should get home. Thunderstorms made him uncomfortable.

A giggle sounded close to him, startling him. He had been alone on the dock. Everyone else had gone home. His blue eyes widened, and he looked both left and right, seeing nobody. What the heck? He rubbed his eyes and faced the sea. What he saw gave him a shock. There was a girl in the sea!

Water ran in rivulets down her rosy cheeks, as he scrambled backward, frosty blue gaze widened even further as a feeling of awe set in. A little girl, surely no older than himself, popped up out of the angry ocean waters as if she had merely been playing in a swimming pool! Her tiny body was pale, adorned in shimmering scales of blue, gold, and green. Her hair was the deepest of reds, and her big eyes adorned with soot black ashes. He offered her a panicked, bewildered smile, sea spraying his face in a fine mist from his safe spot on the well worn wood of the dock.

"A-are you a mermaid, miss?" The boy asked shyly, still batting off feelings of uncertainty and fear. Although, a harmless looking child was not often feared by any other child, and this fact did not escape the boy. Humans just naturally feared the strange. The redheaded girl giggled, causing his smile to widen exponentially and the fear to dampen to little more than a fizzled out spark.

A wet hand covered her pink lips, and her verdant eyes danced like waves of the sea. The girl in the water crooked a finger in his direction, as if to ask him to move closer to the edge of the dock. Fishermen everywhere in Amnesty Bay spoke of wild tales in which mermaids lured men to their deaths. But surely, the boy's young brain told him, that another child, so pure and pretty, couldn't possibly be capable of such a thing. He inched forward, hesitation almost forgotten.

"What are you doing out in the water? A storm's a'comin' in, ya know. I heard them in the market."

The child received no answer from the girl, just another come hither motion from her little finger. He blinked curiously, lips parting slightly as he exhaled an impatient puff of air. The temperature was dropping, a telltale sign that the storm was almost upon them. The skies were an unforgiving gray, though in Amnesty Bay, the sun didn't often shine bright through the dim sky and fog rolling off the ocean. His breath crystallized in the air, making a miniature cloud puff before him. Neither child paid it any mind as he sat down, carefully dropping his legs over the edge of the dock, and planted his rear end on a sturdy, weather worn plank. She moved closer too, face lighting up a little more brilliantly than before. He noticed she wore a tiny golden tiara in her red curls. Like a princess, he thought to himself in delight. There was a strange symbol hanging from a form fitted belt against her waist too, that resembled the letter "A". The boy wondered what it was. Thunder growled across the bay in warning of the fast coming rain.

"What are you doing in the water?" He asked her again, leaning forward.

The little girl opened her mouth to speak, but he never heard her answer. A loud clap of thunder echoed through the air, and black clouds filtered out the light above. The boy jumped, accidentally knocking himself loose from his perch and icy grey ocean filled his eyes instead. The shock seized the air in his chest and he lost precious breath, panic freezing in the veins of his tiny body. He struggled to hold his breath, flailing around in the water. He hadn't ever learned to swim, and his papa wasn't around anymore to teach him. He'd up and gone, though Arthur didn't know where. He cried out for him none the less, something cold and hard striking his temple before darkness attacked the outward fringes of his vision and he lost himself - the girl nowhere to be seen.

_________________

Arthur's eyes snapped open and he drew in a breath greedily, tossing the green comforter off his torso with more force than necessary. His heart raced in his chest, thumped loudly in his ears. If there was one thing he didn't enjoy, it was bad dreams. He ran a shaky hand through his long hair, grumbling to himself. It hadn't been just any average dream, either. The events had really happened. As a child, he'd fallen off one of the docks into the water. When he finally came to, he found himself beached on the rocks by his father's lighthouse. How he had survived that night, he didn't know.

Washed out sunlight filtered in through the old gauzy curtains hanging over his bedroom window, and wind whistled around the exterior of the lighthouse. Tom Curry, his father, had passed away when Arthur was only a boy and left everything to his son. By some streak of luck (good or bad was debatable), he hadn't been swept up into a foster home or adopted, but raised himself, quietly from within the lighthouse. Hell, he didn't even know if anyone at the time had known and realized. But since, he had yet to redecorate - wasn't exactly at the top of his list of things to do with surviving and all. In his defense, he barely spent any time inside the lighthouse. Most of his time... there was the sea. Stupid boy hadn't cared that he had almost drowned and had gone back, over and over, to the water's edge looking for that redhead. He had waded out at low tide, practiced swimming, finding it to be one of his born gifts, as he childishly awaited her return. Some time during his growth, he must have subconsciously realized she would never come and wrote her off as nothing more than a figment of his imagination. After all, the rational adult mind couldn't assume that some child magically moved through stormy waters; waters that were so cold and with the ability to overpower grown men, for fun no less, without drowning.

Without bothering to make up the bed, Arthur moved around his room with a loud sigh. The headaches were starting to come back - they always did when he was away from the water too long. He showered quickly, wanting to soothe the pain away, (though it didn't work nearly as well as the salty water of the sea) and sauntered down the stairs. He buttered himself some toast and quickly fried up some eggs. The dream still haunted the thoughts at the back of his mind, but he did his best to ignore it, and scarfed down his eggs before they had a chance to cool.

By the time he was dressed, belly full, the sun was high in the sky. Arthur wasn't particularly picky, nobody to impress, no friends or associates or "legitimate job" to deal with (he preferred odd jobs and something a bit more...mythical. Like bringing in fish with the tide for the fisherman of Amnesty Bay, but that was quite a long story in itself.) So maybe, he told himself silently, it was time to start working on fixing up the lighthouse. He lived in it, so why not? His blue eyes swept across the room. What should he even start with? The stairs creaked, the windows were smudged and cracked in a couple places, the paint chipped in every room...he let out a groan, shaking his head. As a child, he hadn't been able to really do much of any upkeep - what kid could? He frowned, as there was no real excuse why he hadn't done much as he had gotten older.

His eyes fell finally on the front door. The paint was warped and bubbling in spots, streaks missing and the hinges rusted. Arthur winced. Front door first - time to stop living like a squatter. He'd have to start from the ground floor up. Maybe not decorating as that sounded like a little too much for his tastes, but at least everything would work properly. He set about gathering tools and materials, humming a tune from his childhood as he worked.

_"First the tide rushes in,_

_Plants a kiss on the shore,_

_Then rolls out to sea_

_And the sea is very still once more..."_

__

 

It took several hours to gather everything he needed, but once he had, Arthur set himself right to work. He tied his hair back so it was out of the way and pulled the door from its place without only a little difficulty. He started sanding the gross paint off the door, sleeves rolled a quarter of the way up, sitting in a metal folding chair beside the table the door sat upon, and hummed to himself. The paint was rough to remove, but with a little elbow grease, it finally started to come off. He grinned, admiring his handiwork.

"Arthur Curry?" A melodious, sweet voice that he didn't recognize. It came from somewhere behind him, giving him pause. He stopped sanding, wondering who his mysterious visitor was. The villagers of Amnesty Bay left him in peace, and when they did disturb him, they usually only did it in the tavern. As long as he had been in the lighthouse, none had come to bother him. He did his thing and they did theirs. He lifted his head, but only to observe the work he had yet to complete on the door before he continued at a slower pace.

"Go away, I don't want to buy anything," he called without looking up. The woman bristled.

Her hair was a brilliant red, and she had vibrant green eyes that trailed from his dark hair, streaked with gold, tied back loosely at the nape of his neck, and the dark tattoos wrapped around his sun-kissed arms. She felt surprise, and if she was honest with herself (though she was too prideful to have ever admitted it), a bit of appreciation for his charming appearance, well up inside her of its own accord. Long gone were the innocent features of their childhood. She had a tiny smile that hugged the left corner of her mouth, formed upon hearing the song he hummed to himself as he worked. One of her perfectly shaped eyebrows arched upward in question.

It had been years since she had laid her eyes on him, but Mera, Queen Regent of Atlantis, had known it was him beside the rocky shoreline of the rickety old lighthouse almost instantly. She recognized the tune he had been humming as the very same song he often sang to himself on the docks when they had been only children, and yet somehow, it had still ingrained itself in her memory. She took in a breath of too dry air. Arthur was sanding something down with coarse, odd paper. What was he doing exactly? Though, she found she didn't really care. It was just good, she told herself, that she had found him so quickly.

"I do not recall stating that I wished to sell you anything."

Was he speaking so snarkishly to her that way? Her smile dropped to a thin line of disapproval. He didn't even know to whom he had the pleasure of speaking, let alone what it was about! She crossed her arm haughtily over her side and stepped closer, gracefully, despite feeling quite literally like a fish out of water. A rivulet of that very sea water ran uncomfortably from her hair down her collar, and into the chest of her suit. What she wouldn't give to return to the comfort of the ocean...

The man was dressed simply, not unlike any other mundane human in a pair of tight fitting jeans and a simple black tee with a red and black flannel tossed carelessly over his shoulders. Mera found the choice distasteful, but that was far from a shock - there wasn't much about humans that the woman was familiar with. She knew that they looked similar to herself and her kind, and they all wore clothing, but it was there that a lot of the similarities ended. The biggest difference between them was probably that they were often much drier than their Atlantean neighbors.

Mera hated being on the land. She felt out of place, her legs weaker outside the ocean waves, and her own attire made her stand out like a sore thumb. She tucked a wet red curl from her face and put it behind her ear. _Not to mention that I am, of course, the only person soaked to the bone._ She scoffed inwardly, attention trailing down her own form as she waited for her presence to be truly acknowledged.

Arthur glanced up, and the woman was met with eyes of the frostiest of blues. His dark expression remained, though she could almost see the glimmer of surprise in those pale eyes. He probably hadn't expected a woman in a brilliant suit of form fitting scales to appear before him. She knew he was potentially curious, but definitely still annoyed by the tic in his jaw. He blinked as if trying to clear her image away mentally, and looked around before looking back at her.

"So?"

_This is your king_ , she told herself in a mantra, frown deepening. He glanced at her a second time and leveled his stare, as if daring her to hold his gaze. So she did, stalking closer as she felt anger seeping in. "My name is Mera."

"What do you want... _Mera_?" Her name rolled off his tongue thicker than honey, giving her pause, but only for the smallest of moments. She took another step closer, and another, until they were only an arm's length away from each other. Arthur put down the sandpaper and patted his hands on his jeans. Good, maybe now she could hold his attention.

"I've come to take you to your home, as your mother would have wanted."

"My mother?" She watched as his eyes followed a bead of water as it slid down her cheek, and she shifted uneasily. "I don't have a mother - abandoned me as a babe."

He shrugged his shoulders and tore his gaze from her to the wooden door he had been sanding again. It was half finished, bits of flaking white paint still visible on the side farthest from him. Mera bit back a sigh of impatience.

"Yes, please, you do."

Arthur turned back to her abruptly, the coldness flooding back to his face. "And you know her, huh? She coming back with a messenger girl over twenty eight years later? A little bit too late, isn't it?"

That gave her pause. So it was true then. Queen Atlanna had succeeded in protecting her son through ignorance and Arthur knew little to nothing of his past. She shifted on her feet, and took in a slow breath. How could she explain this to him without surely sounding out of her mind? She wanted to fidget, twist a piece of red hair between her thumb as she thought, but refrained. The queen could show no weakness. That's what she had been taught, and fidgeting was weakness. So Mera stood somewhat awkwardly, unsure of herself.

He was half man of the land and half from the sea - the son of Queen Atlanna and heir to her throne. Atlanna had fallen in love with a human man by the name of Tom Curry, and birthed him a son. Upon realizing there had been too much danger in Atlantis for the halfing prince, she had sent him back to land to live among the humans where he would be safe. Now, he had grown (very well if her eyes were to be any judge) and it was up to Mera, to bring their rightful king home to the ocean. If that explanation by itself didn't sound ludicrous to someone growing up human on land, she didn't know what did.

"I..." The redhead hesitated, licking her bottom lip as she thought.

"Why are you soaked? What the hell are you even wearing?" He asked abruptly, sneering at her form fitted outfit. His temper was flaring - talking about the mother he had never known was an obvious sore subject. Or maybe he knew a little bit about enough things to know she wasn't dripping with sea water for nothing. He crinkled the bit of sandpaper he had laid on top of his half finished project and tossed it aside, before standing.. Arthur stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jean and grumbled under his breath. He nodded his head toward the open doorway.

"Let's go inside, talk about this home of yours, Red."

 


End file.
